From Medical News Today, word of a major failure of peer review spanning years and 11 journals.
Researcher Who Studied Benefits Of Red Wine Falsified Data Says University
An extensive misconduct investigation that took three years to complete and produced a 60,000-page report, concludes that a researcher who has come to prominence in recent years for his investigations into the beneficial properties of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, “is guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data”.
In a statement published on the university’s news website on Wednesday, the University of Connecticut (UConn) Health Center said the investigation has led them to inform 11 scientific journals that had published studies conducted by Dr Dipak K. Das, a professor in the unversity’s Department of Surgery and director of its Cardiovascular Research Center.
The internal investigation, which covered seven years of work in Das’s lab, was triggered by an anonyomous allegation of “research irregularities” in 2008.
…
Philip Austin, UConn’s interim vice president for health affairs, said:
“We have a responsibility to correct the scientific record and inform peer researchers across the country.”
…
According to a report from the Associated Press (AP), Dr Nir Barzilai, whose team conducts resveratrol research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says Das is not a major player in the field.
Barzilai told AP lots of labs around the world are conducting extensive research into resveratrol, with encouraging results, and the new allegation will not make a material difference.
Full article here – h/t to WUWT reader Mark Johnson
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, I guess it is disappointing, but not consequential, that this guy falsified data. I love my red wine! Lol!
By the way, my dear late Aunt Kathyrn used to drink one glass of red wine a night (well, maybe more than one glass a night every so often. . .). For her health and relaxation, she said.
Unfortunately, she also smoked a lot. She died of cancer in 1974. So red wine couldn’t save her, alas.
I take a little wine daily purely for medishinull purposhes, y’know…
TomRude says:
January 12, 2012 at 10:22 pm
No need for research as we all know that wine in moderate quantities is good for health: in French clinics 40 years ago, a glass of wine was given to recovering patients…
Yeah, and they also gave you a pack of smokes.
Pat Frank: “From this, one can surmise that the UEA, UVA, and UPenn administrative hierarchy are ethically smarmy rather than merely venal.”
Those who are going to make disparaging remarks about people or institutions, have an important duty, in fact, a moral obligation, to get the intended (and deserving) targets right. I assume in the line quoted above that you meant Penn State (of Michael Mann and Jerry Sandusky fame) and NOT UPenn, which is a completely different institution with no connection to Penn State whatsoever, except for being located in Pennsylvania. I hope that others here know the difference, but for those who may not, please realize that UPenn has so far maintained a quite respectable reputation and has no association with the sordid affairs and deeds being attributed to the other institutions listed in the quote above.
I should also warn readers that (I am pretty sure) the Pat Frank I quote above and retiring Massachusetts Senator Barney Frank are NOT the same person even though, if I may be frank (and confuse things even more), one could confuse them because they have identical surnames and share at least one letter in their given names.
Does this mean I can go back to drinking Everclear?
Let me set the record straight IMHO. They are looking at the wrong molecule. It’s not the resveratrol that has theurapuetic benefits. It’s the flavonoids. Especially the ones with “sugar” functional groups at the 2 and 3 sites on the “C” ring ((as opposed to methylation, (more prevalent in citrus)). Such molecules as apigenin, quercitin, kaempherol, myricetin, etc. They act as both saponifying agents in the blood stream, Zwitterionic agents in cellular solution and as charged transport regulators positioned in the cellular plasmalemma membrane with the C ring swinging back and forth between the cell interior and the free space (as determined by electron microscopy).
In addition to red wine (concentrates the goodies) or juice, it can be found in:
“Foods rich in quercetin include black and green tea (Camellia sinensis; 2000–2500 mg/kg), capers (1800 mg/kg),[5] lovage (1700 mg/kg), apples (440 mg/kg), onion, especially red onion (191 mg/kg) (higher concentrations of quercetin occur in the outermost rings[6]), red grapes, citrus fruit, tomato, broccoli and other leafy green vegetables, and a number of berries, including raspberry, bog whortleberry (158 mg/kg, fresh weight), lingonberry (cultivated 74 mg/kg, wild 146 mg/kg), cranberry (cultivated 83 mg/kg, wild 121 mg/kg), chokeberry (89 mg/kg), sweet rowan (85 mg/kg), rowanberry (63 mg/kg), sea buckthorn berry (62 mg/kg), crowberry (cultivated 53 mg/kg, wild 56 mg/kg),[7] and the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. A recent study found that organically grown tomatoes had 79% more quercetin than “conventionally grown”.[8]”
Blackberry has verrry high concentrations!
Apigenin has the greatest “activity” on DNA replication in vitro. I had to fractionate and purify apigenin from the ground-up leaves of a black willow tree (also the source of aspirin) in a Methanolic-Acetic Acid HPLC distillation to get sufficient quantities for unpublished experimentation (not oil funded ;<D).
And of course, I drink red wine daily.
That sounds crazy. But red is still one of the most enjoyable drink anytime!
was this the only man… was this the only team…. this one study does not negate all other studies… and please, do you like wine? drink it… if you don’t like wine… ummm… don’t drink it. i don’t need a study on it anyway.
Samurai asks:
January 12, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Seriously, what exactly will it take to finally put an end the CAGW theory?
My answer is it will take a better understanding of Human Physiology as it relates to carbon dioxide. One learned in elementary school that people and animals breathe in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide, while plants do the reverse. One might learn in high school that the pH of the blood must be maintained within very limits, and the body does this by means of carbonic acid, which is what carbon dioxide becomes when it dissolves in aqueous media (such as tissues or blood). One seldom learns anything else.
Thus, the unstated assumption will be that carbon dioxide is a waste product and therefore harmful. The sooner one gets rid of it the better. And that is NOT true. Rather it must be maintained within narrow limits. If there is too little carbon dioxide in the air, the result will be a shortening of life expectancy.
Far too little has been published in this area. The navy did some research I’d love to find (for submarines), and there must be considerably more data prior to everything being put onto the internet.
In nutritional research, we find out a lot of what compounds are vital or useful to health by studying growth rates of young animals. I found three studies on carbon dioxide levels and growth, all in embryonic chickens. They showed that nest conditions allowing a buildup of carbon dioxide as the embryo respired resulted in slightly faster embryonic growth. This would have a positive survival effect in wild birds, and is one reason why wild birds eagerly seek human-built nest boxes if they can find them (weather and predator protection are even bigger reasons).
We are learning a lot about ecology, and there is a growing interest in protecting and expanding wild habitat and animal and plant diversity. Nest boxes will turn out to be a major tool we can use (also planting useful cover).